"Ruby," said Nigel, a fortnight later, coming into his wife's bedroom
after the morning walk on the river bank which invariably succeeded his
plunge into the Nile, "whom do you think I've just met in Luxor?"
He was holding a packet of letters and papers in his hand. The post had
just arrived.
Mrs. Armine, wrapped in a long white gown which did not define her
figure, with her shining hair coiled loosely at the back of her neck,
was sitting before the toilet-table, and looked round over her shoulder.
"Some one we both know, Nigel?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Not the magenta and red together, then?"
"The Haymans--no, though I believe they are here at the Winter Palace."
"God bless them!" she murmured, with a slight contraction of her
forehead. "Is it a man or a woman?"
"A man."
"A man!" She turned right round, with a sharp movement, holding the arms
of her chair tightly. "Not Meyer Isaacson?"
"Isaacson! Good heavens! He never takes a holiday except in August. Dear
old chap! No, this is some one not specially interesting, but not bad;
only Baroudi."
Mrs. Armine's hands dropped from the arms of the chair, as she turned
towards the glass.
"Baroudi!" she said, as if the name meant nothing to her. "Why do you
string one up for nothing, Nigel?"
She took up a powder-puff.
"Do you mean the man on the _Hohenzollern_? What has he to do with us?"
Nigel crossed the room, and sat down on a chair by the side of the
toilet-table, facing his wife and holding in his lap the bundle of
letters and papers.
"Are you disappointed, Ruby?"
"No, because we don't need any one. But you roused my expectation, and
then played a cold douche upon it, you tiresome person!"
There was a sort of muffled crossness in her voice, but as she passed
the powder-puff over her face her eyes and her lips were smiling. Nigel
leaned his arm upon the table.
"Ruby," he said.
"Well--what is it?"
She stopped powdering.
"I wish you wouldn't do--all that."
"All what?"
"All those things to your face. You are beautiful. I wish you would
leave your face alone."
"I do, practically. I only try to save it a little from the sun. You
wouldn't have me look like the wife of one of what Ibrahim calls 'the
fellaheen peoples,' would you?"
"I want you to look as natural and simple as you always are with me. I
don't mean that you are simple in mind, of course. I am speaking of your
manner."
"My dear Nigel, who is affected nowadays? But I really mustn't look like
the fellaheen peoples. Ibrahim would be shocked."
Nevertheless, she put the powder-puff down.
"You don't trust your own beauty, Ruby," he said.
She sat back and looked at him very gravely, as if his remark had made a
strong impression upon her. Then she looked into the mirror, then she
looked again at him.
"You think I should be wise to trust it as much as that?"
"Of course you would."
He laid his hand on hers.
"You are blossoming here in Egypt, but you hardly let one know it when
you put things on your face."
She gazed again into the glass in silence.
"Any letters for me?" she said, at last.
"I haven't looked yet. I walked with Baroudi on the bank. He's joined
his dahabeeyah, and is going up to Armant to see to his affairs in the
sugar business up there."
"Oh!"
"I believe he only stays till to-morrow or Wednesday. He invited me to
go over to his boat and have a look at it this afternoon."
"Are you going?"
"I told him I'd let him know. Shall I go?"
"Don't you want to?"
"I should like to see the boat, but--you see, he's half an Oriental, and
perhaps he didn't think it was the proper thing to do, but--"
"He didn't invite me. Why should he? Go, Nigel. You want a man's society
sometimes. You mustn't always sit in my pocket. And besides, you're just
off to the Fayyum. I must get accustomed to an occasional lonely hour."
He pressed his hand on hers.
"I shall soon come back. And soon you shall come with me there."
"I love this place," she said. "Are there any letters for me?"
He untied the string of the packet, looked over the contents, and handed
her three or four.
"And now run away and read yours," she said. "When you're in my room I
can do nothing. You take up all my attention. I'll come down in a few
minutes."
He gave her a kiss and obeyed her.
When he was in the little drawing-room, he threw the papers carelessly
on a table without taking off their wrappers. He had scarcely looked at
a paper since he had been in Egypt; he had had other things to do,
things that had engrossed him mind and body. Like many men who are
informed by a vital enthusiasm, Nigel sometimes lived for a time in
blinkers, which shut out from his view completely the world to right and
left of him. He could be an almost terribly concentrated man. And since
he had been in Egypt he had been concentrated on his wife, and on his
own life in relation to her. The affairs of the nations had not troubled
him. He had read his letters, and little besides. Now he took those
which had come that morning, and went out upon the terrace to run
through them in the sunshine.
Bills, a communication from his agent at Etchingham, a note from his man
of affairs in Cairo, and--hullo!--a letter from his brother, Harwich!
That did not promise him much pleasure. Already he had received several
family letters scarcely rejoicing in his marriage. They had not bothered
him as much as he had formerly feared they would. He did not expect his
relations, or the world, to look at things with his eyes, to think of
Ruby with gentleness or even forgiveness for her past. He knew his world
too well to make preposterous mental demands upon it. But Harwich had
already expressed himself with his usual freedom. There seemed no
particular reason why he should write so soon again.
Nigel tore open the letter, read it quickly, re-read it, then laid it
down upon his knees, pulled his linen hat over his eyes, and sat for a
long while quite motionless, thinking.
His brother's letter informed him that his sister-in-law, Zoe, Harwich's
wife, had given birth to twin children--sons--and that they were
"stunningly well--hip, hip, hooray!"
Harwich's boisterous joy was very natural, and might be supposed to
spring from paternal feelings that did him honour, but there was a note
of triumph in his exultation which Nigel understood, and which made him
thoughtful now. Harwich was glorying in the fact that Nigel and Nigel's
wife were cut out of the succession--that, so far as one could see, Mrs.
Armine would now never be Lady Harwich.
For himself Nigel did not care at all. Harwich was ten years older than
he was, but he had never thought about succeeding him, had never wished
to succeed him, and when he had married Ruby he had known that his
sister-in-law was going to have a child. He had known this, but he had
not told it to Ruby. He had not concealed it; simply, it had not
occurred to him to tell her. Now the tone of Harwich's letter was making
him wonder, "Will she mind?"
Presently he heard her coming into the room behind him, crossing it,
stepping out upon the terrace.
"Nigel! Are you asleep?"
"Asleep!" he said. "At this hour!"
For once there was an unnatural sound in his voice, a note of
carelessness that was forced. He jumped up from his chair, scattering
his letters on the ground.
"You haven't read your letters all this time!"
"Not yet; not all of them, at least," he said, bending to pick them up.
"I've been reading one from my brother, Harwich."
"From Lord Harwich?" She sent a sharp look to him. "Is it bad news? Is
Lord Harwich ill?"
"No, Ruby."
"Then what's the matter?"
"The matter? Nothing! On the contrary, it's a piece of good news."
In spite of himself almost, his eyes were staring at her with an
expression of scrutiny that was fierce, because of the anxiety within
him.
"Poor old Harwich has had to wait so long, and now at last he's got what
he's wanted."
"What's that?"
"A child--that is, children--twins."
There was a moment of silence. Then Mrs. Armine said, with a smile:
"So that's it!"
"Yes, that's it, Ruby."
"Girls? Boys? Girl and boy?"
"Boys, both of them."
"When you write, congratulate him for me. And now read the rest of your
letters. I'm going to take a stroll in the garden."
As she spoke, she put up her parasol and sauntered away towards the
Nile, stopping now and then to look at a flower or tree, to take a rose
in her hand, smell it, then let it go with a careless gesture.
"Does she really mind? Damn it, does she mind?"
There had been no cloud on her face, no involuntary movement of dismay,
yet in her apparently unruffled calm there had been a reticence that
somehow had chilled him. She was so clever in reading people that surely
she must have felt the anxiety in his heart, the eager desire to be
reassured. If she had only responded to it frankly, if she had only come
up to him, touched his hand, said, "Dear old boy, what does it matter?
You don't suppose I've ever bothered about being the future Lady
Harwich?"--something of that kind, all his doubts would have been swept
away. But she had taken it too coolly, almost, had dismissed it too
abruptly. Perhaps that was his fault, though, for he had been reserved
with her, had not said to her all he was thinking, or indeed anything he
was thinking.
"Ruby! I say, Ruby!"
Following a strong impulse, he hastened after her, and came up with her
on the bank of the Nile.
"Look!" she said.
"What? Oh, Baroudi's dahabeeyah tied up over there! Yes, I knew that.
It's to get out of the noise of Luxor. Ruby, you--you don't mind about
Harwich and the boys?"
"Mind?" she said.
Her voice was suddenly almost angry, and an expression that was hard
came into her brilliant eyes.
"Mind? What do you mean, Nigel?"
"Well, you see it makes a lot of difference in my position from the
worldly point of view."
"And you think I care about that! I knew you did. I knew exactly what
you were thinking on the terrace!"
There was a wounded sound in her voice. Then she added, with a sort of
terribly bitter quietness:
"But--what else could you, or anyone, think?"
"Ruby!" he exclaimed.
He tried to seize her hand, but she would not let him.
"No, Nigel! don't touch me now. I--I shall hate you if you touch me
now."
Her face was distorted with passion, and the tears stood in her eyes.
"I don't blame you a bit," she said. "I should be a fool to expect
anyone, even you, to believe in me after all that--all that has
happened. But--it is hard, sometimes it is frightfully hard, to bear all
this disbelief that one can have any good in one."
She turned hurriedly away.
"Ruby!" he said, with a passion of tenderness.
"No, no! Leave me alone for a little. I tell you I must be alone!" she
exclaimed, as he followed her.
He stopped on the garden path and watched her go into the house.
"Beast, brute that I am!" he said to himself.
He clenched his hands. At that moment he hated himself; he longed to
strike himself down--himself, and all men with himself--to lay them even
with the ground--cynics, unbelievers, agents destructive of all that was
good and noble.
Mrs. Armine went straight up to her room, locked the door against her
maid, and gave way to a violent storm of passion, which had been
determined by Nigel's impulse to be frank, following on his news of
Harwich. With the shrewd cleverness that scarcely ever deserted her, she
had forced her temper into the service of deception. When she knew she
had lost her self-control, that she must show how indignant she was, she
had linked her anger to a cause with which it had nothing to do, a cause
that would stir all his tenderness for her. At the moment when she was
hating him, she was teaching him to love her, and deliberately teaching
him. But now that she was alone, all that was deliberate deserted her,
and, disregarding even the effect grief and anger unrestrained must have
upon her appearance, she gave way, and gave way completely.
She did not come down to lunch, but towards tea-time she reappeared in
the garden, looking calm, but pathetically tired, with soft and wistful
eyes.
"When are you starting for the dahabeeyah?" she asked, as Nigel came
anxiously, repentantly forward to meet her.
"I don't think I'll go at all. I don't want to go. I'll stay here and
have tea with you."
"No, you mustn't do that. I shall like to have tea alone to-day."
She spoke very gently, but her manner, her eyes, and every word rebuked
him.
"Then I'll go," he said, "if you prefer it."
He looked down.
"Baroudi's men have come already to take me over."
"I heard them singing, up in my bedroom. Run along! Don't keep him
waiting."
With the final words she seemed to make an effort, to try to assume the
playful, half-patronizing manner of a pretty woman of the world to a man
supposed to adore her; but she allowed her lips to tremble so that he
might see she was playing a part. He did not dare to say that he saw,
and he went down to the bank of the Nile, got into the felucca that was
waiting, and was rowed out into the river.
As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Armine called Ibrahim to come and put a
chair and a table for her in the shadow of the wall, close to the stone
promontory that was thrust out into the Nile to keep its current from
eating away the earth embankment of the garden.
"I am going to have tea here, Ibrahim," she said. "Tell Hassan to bring
it directly the sun begins to set."
"Yes, suttinly," replied the always young and cheerful. "And shall
Ibrahim come back and stay with you?"
She shook her head, looking kindly at the boy, who had quickly learnt to
adore her, as had all the Nubians in the villa.
"Not to-day, Ibrahim. To-day I want to be alone."
He inclined his long, thin body, and answered gravely:
"All what you want you must have, my lady."
"Don't call me 'my lady' to-day!" she exclaimed, with a sudden
sharpness.
Ibrahim looked amazed and hurt.
"Never mind, Ibrahim!"--she touched her forehead--"I've got a bad head
to-day, and it makes me cross about nothing."
He thrust one hand into his gold-coloured skirt, and produced a glass
bottle full of some very cheap perfume from Europe.
"This will cure you, my la--mees. Rub it on your head. It is a bootiful
stink. It stinks lovely indeed!"
She accepted it with a grateful smile, and he went pensively to order
the tea; letting his head droop towards his left shoulder, and looking
rather like a faithful dog that, quite unexpectedly, is not wanted by
his mistress. Mrs. Armine sat still, frowning.
She could hear the Nubians of Baroudi singing as they bent to their
mighty oars; not the song of Allah with which they had greeted her on
her arrival, obedient perhaps to some message sent from Alexandria by
their master, but a low and mysterious chaunt that was almost like a
murmur from some spirit of the Nile, and that seemed strangely
expressive of a sadness of the sun, as if even in the core of the golden
glory there lurked a canker, like the canker of uncertainty that lies in
the heart of all human joy.
The day was beginning to decline; the boatmen's voices died away;
Hassan, in obedience to Ibrahim's order, brought out tea to his mistress
in the garden. When he had finished arranging it, he stood near her for
a moment, looking across the water to Baroudi's big white dahabeeyah,
which was tied up against the bank a little way down the river. In his
eyes there were yellow lights.
"What are you doing, Hassan?" asked Mrs. Armine.
The tall Nubian turned towards her.
"Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!" he said. "Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!"
He looked again at the dahabeeyah; then he came to the little table,
moved a plate, touched and smoothed the table-cloth, and went quietly
away.
Mrs. Armine sipped her tea and looked, still frowning, at the river,
which began to lose its brown colour slowly, to gleam at first with
pallid gold, then with a gold that shone like fire. The eddies beyond
the breakwater were a light and delicate mauve and looked nervously
alive. A strange radiance that was both ethereal and voluptuous, that
seemed to combine elements both spiritual and material, was falling over
this world, clothing it in a sparkling veil of beauty. And as the gold
on the river deepened in hue, it spread swiftly upon the water, it
travelled down towards Luxor, it crept from the western bank to the
eastern bank of the Nile, from the dahabeeyah of Baroudi almost to the
feet of Mrs. Armine.
"Mahmoud Baroudi is rich! Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!"
Why had Hassan said that? What had it to do with her? She looked across
at Baroudi's great white boat, which now was turning into a black jewel
on the gold of the moving river, and she felt as if, like some magician
who understood her nature, he was trying to comfort her to-day by
showering gold towards her. It was an absurd fancy, at which, in a
moment, she was smiling bitterly enough.
She almost hated Nigel to-day. When she had left him in the garden
before luncheon, she had quite hated him for his unworldliness, combined
with a sort of boyish simplicity and wistfulness. Of course he had
known, he must have known, that Zoe Harwich was going to have a child;
he must have known it when he was shooting with his brother in the
autumn. And he had never said a word of it to her. And now he was cut
out of the succession. He might never have succeeded his brother; but
there had been a great chance that he would, that some day she would be
reigning as Lady Harwich. That thought had swayed her towards him, had
had very much to do with the part she had played in London which had won
her Nigel as a husband. If what was now a fact had been a fact a few
weeks ago, would she ever have schemed to marry him, would such an
alliance have been "worth her while"?
How Lady Hayman and all her tribe, a tribe which once had petted and
entertained the beautiful Mrs. Chepstow, had dubbed her "Bella Donna,"
how they must be rejoicing to-day! She could almost hear what they were
saying as she sat in the sunset by the Nile. "What a mercy that woman
has overreached herself!" "How furious she must, be, now Harwich has got
sons!" "What a delicious slap in the face for her after catching that
foolish Nigel Armine!" Hundreds of women were smiling over her
discomfiture at this moment, and probably also hundreds of men. For no
one would give her credit for having married Nigel for himself, for
having honestly fallen in love with him and acted "squarely" towards
him. And, of course, she had not fallen in love with him. He was not,
indeed, the type of man with whom a nature and a temperament like hers
could fall in love. She had liked him before she married him, he had
even had for her a certain physical attraction; but already that
physical attraction--really the passing fancy of a capricious and a
too-experienced woman--had lost its savour, and for a reason that, had
he known it, would have cut Nigel to the heart.
She could not bear his love of an ideal, his instinct to search for
hidden good in men and women, but especially in herself, his secret
desire for moral progress. She knew that these traits existed in him,
and therefore was able to hate them; but she was incapable of really
understanding them, clever woman though she was. Her cleverness was of
that type which comprehends vice more completely than virtue, and
although she could apprehend virtue, as she had proved by her conduct in
London which had led to her capture of Nigel, she could never learn
really to understand its loveliness, or to bask happily in its warmth
and light. Morally she seemed to be impotent. And the great gulf which
must for ever divide her husband from her was his absolute disbelief
that any human being can be morally impotent. He must for ever
misunderstand her, because his power to read character was less acute
than his power to love. And she, in her inmost chamber of the soul,
though she might play a part to deceive, though she might seldom be,
however often appearing to be, truly her natural self, had the desire,
active surely or latent in the souls of all human creatures, to be
understood, to be known as she actually was.
Nigel had been aware that Zoe Harwich was going to have a child, and he
had never let her know it.
She repeated that fact over and over in her mind as she sat and looked
at the sunset. Ever since the morning she had been repeating it over and
over. Even her violent outburst of temper had not stilled the insistent
voice which in reiteration never wearied. In the first moments of her
bitterness and anger, the voice had added, "Nigel shall pay me for
this." It did not add this now, perhaps because into her fierceness had
glided a weariness. She was paying for her passion. Perhaps Nigel would
have to pay for that payment too. He was going away to the Fayyum in two
or three days. How she wished he was going to-night, that she need not
be with him to-night, need not play the good woman, or the woman with
developing goodness in her, to-night, now that she was weary from having
been angry!
The tea had become almost black from standing. She poured out another
cupful, and began to drink it without putting in milk or sugar. It
tasted acrid, astringent, almost fierce, on her palate; it lifted the
weariness from her, seemed to draw back curtains from a determined
figure which slipped out naked into the light, the truth of herself
untired and unashamed.
Nigel would have to reckon with that some day.
The gold was fading from the river now, the water was becoming like
liquid silver, then, in a moment, like liquid steel. On the dahabeeyah,
which began to look as if it were a long way off and were receding from
her, shone a red and a blue light. Still the vehement voices of the
brown fellahin at work by the shaduf rose unwearied along the Nile.
During the last days Mrs. Armine's ears had grown accustomed to these
voices, so accustomed to them that it was already becoming difficult to
her to realize that but a short time ago she had never heard them, never
felt their curious influence, their driving power, which, mingled with
other powers of sun and air, flogs the souls of men and women into
desire of ungentle joys and of sometimes cruel pleasures. And now, with
the fading away of the daylight, those powerful, savage, and sad voices
gained in meaning, seemed no more to be issuing from the throats of
toiling and sweating Egyptians, but to be issuing from the throat of
this land of ruins and gold, where the green runs flush with the sand,
and the lark sings in the morning, where the jackal whines by night.
For a long time Mrs. Armine listened, sitting absolutely still. Then
suddenly she moved, got up, and went swiftly towards the house. Nigel
was coming back. Mingling with the voices of the shaduf men she heard
the voices of Baroudi's Nubians.
When she had reached the house, she went up at once to her bedroom, shut
the door, and stood by the open window that gave on to a balcony which
faced towards the Nile. The voices of the shaduf men had now suddenly
died away. With the rapid falling of night the singers' time for repose
had come; they had slipped on their purple garments, and were walking to
their villages. Those other voices drew nearer and nearer, murmuring
deeply, rather than actually singing, their fatalistic chaunt which set
the time for the oars.
Darkness came. The voices ceased.
Mrs. Armine leaned forward, with one hand on the window-frame. Her white
teeth showed on her lower lip.
In the garden she heard two voices talking, and moving towards the
house.
* * * * *
"Marie! Marie!"
Her maid came running.
"_V'la_, madame? What does madame want?"
"I am going to change my gown."
"Madame is going to dress for the evening?"
"No. I don't dine for two hours."
"Then madame--"
"Don't talk so much. Get me out a white gown, that white linen gown I
got at Paquin's and have never worn yet. And put me out--"
She gave some directions about stockings and shoes, and went in to her
dressing-room, where she stood before the mirror, carefully examining
her face. Then she took off the hat she was wearing.
"Lock the bedroom door and the door into monsieur's room!" she called,
in a moment.
"_Bien_, madame!"
"_Mon Dieu!_" muttered the maid, as she went to turn the keys, "is she
going mad? What has she? There is no one here, there is no one coming,
and all this _tohu-bohu!_"
"Get out the white hat with the white picotees!"
"Ah, _mon Dieu!_"
"Do you hear? The white--"
"I hear, I hear, madame! Oh, _la, la, la!_"
"Make haste!"
"_Bien_, madame, _tres bien!_"
The girl ran for the hat, and Mrs. Armine, who had lighted all the
candles, sat down before the glass. She remembered Nigel's desire
expressed to her that day that she would give up "doing things" to her
face. Well, she would respond to it in this way!
Very carefully and cleverly she began to whiten her face, to touch up
her eyes and her narrow, definite eyebrows.
"All is ready, madame!"
Marie was standing at the dressing-room door; she started and swung
round on her heels as there came a knock at the door of the bedroom, the
creak of the handle turning.
"Be quiet!"
Mrs. Armine had caught her arm. The girl stood still, staring and
marvelling, while her mistress went noiselessly into the bedroom and
sat down on the far side of the bed, leaning backwards till her head was
near the pillows, which she took care not to touch.
"Ruby! Ruby!"
"What is it? Who's there? Who's there?"
The voice that replied sounded both languid and surprised.
"I--Nigel!"
Mrs. Armine sat up.
"What is it, Nigel? I'm lying down."
"Oh, I'm--I'm sorry if I've disturbed you, but--you're not ill?"
"No, only resting. What is it, Nigel?"
"I've brought Baroudi over to see you and the villa, and to dine with us
to-night."
"Oh--very well."
"You don't mind, Ruby?"
The voice outside the door was suddenly very low.
"Go down and entertain him, and I'll come almost directly."
The handle creaked, as he let it go, but for a moment there was no sound
of retreating footsteps.
"Look here, Ruby, if--"
"Go down! I'll come directly."
Footsteps went towards the stairs.
"Get me into my gown! Wait--change my stockings first."
Marie knelt down quickly on the floor. As she bent her head, she was
smiling.
She began to understand.